Watch more of our videos on Shots!
and live on Freeview channel 276

Staff from a Leeds charity hit hard by the pandemic have been left angry after two men were spotting dumping their rubbish in bins outside the premises.

Staff at Yorkshire’s Brain Tumour Charity on Otley Road, Headingley, were appalled to find their wheelie bins so full of strangers’ bags of household rubbish that the lids could no longer close on Monday May 10.

The bin dumpers had entered the charity shop’s back yard without permission and filled up their few bins with their own household waste, the charity told the YEP.

The charity has now been forced to pay additional fees for extra bin collections.

Covid restrictions have slashed the charity's income by around 61%.

The shop reopened on April 12 and the charity’s bins are already brimming due to the amount of packaging and cardboard included in the wave of donations which have been coming in over the recent weeks.

The charity is now pleading with the culprits to "have a heart and take their waste elsewhere" - and for anyone who knows anything about the incident to come forward.

If this keeps happening, the charity is worried it will keep having to spend money which should be funding vital brain tumour support and research on getting rid of rubbish which is not their own, leading to a severe loss of income.

CEO Marie Peacock said: “We are 100% reliant on donations and want to spend funds raised on supporting people affected by this devastating illness and their loved ones.

"We need donations for our shop to fund the work we do but this is being made impossible for supporters to drop off donations in our yard safely when we have these issues. Every additional empty of our bin costs us the equivalent of a support line call or two patients being able to attend one of our support groups.

"It feels very much like the culprits are taking from people who are in distressing circumstances and I urge them to have a conscience and stop doing this.”

The Yorkshire Evening Post reported back in July 2020 on the “frightening” impact of the pandemic on the charity, where applications for support services soared by a whopping 200% while income was down 61% versus expectations.

The charity recently put out a call for volunteers to help sort out the overwhelming amount of donations which have been given to the shop both during lockdown and since reopening.

To find out more about the charity, visit their website.

Leeds charity shop staff plead with bin bandits to "have a heart" after strangers dump rubbish